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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] straw bales as greenhouse heat source??

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  • From: Allan Balliett <igg AT igg.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] straw bales as greenhouse heat source??
  • Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 15:43:00 -0500

Compost Heated Greenhouses
http://www.attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/compostheatedgh.html

Jean Pain became famous for his ideas on ramial
wood chip mulch to encourage humus formation in soils.

Interestingly, he also wrapped black plastic piping
around very large piles of wood chips to capture
biothermic heat and distribute the hot water to
greenhouses and homes.

Fyi, solar water tubes laid on hoop house floors were
common in southern Europe as a means to release
heat over night. Kenn-Bar used to carry these solar
water tubes in the U.S.

At the Hoop House workshop in Missouri last week,
one person was using gallon-size zip lock baggies
filled with water.... laid in-between plants... for
supplemental heating units over night.

Of course, floating row covers are sometimes
integrated inside hoop houses to preserve ground
heat.

Best regards,

Steve Diver

Steve - Thanks for your good response. Do you have any data on these methods? For example, what sort of heat will a baggy full of water "generate" at night?

The inner covers don't hold that much heat. What is it? 5 degrees, or something like that?

And what's a single layer hoophouse? 15degrees, or something like this?

This all becomes very important to me when I think of hoophousing tomatoes in March in the Mid-Atlantic. It seems to me that 5 degrees here and 5 degrees there ain't really going to make the difference in the possibility of a 20degree night. Maybe I'm too flighty with this, but I'm concerned that the margins aren't there for us.

With brassicas, the cover itself, as far as I can tell, protects us from the physical damage of frost, and then you also have x degrees of warmth, from the outer cover and, potentially, from an inner cover.. With no protection other than the single layer of plastic on our 40x96 hoop, I have BEAUTIFUL tatsoi and some fairly nice asian greens (name escapes me) Nice and alive, but I don't think they have marketable texture. THey have frozen solid a few times. It almost seems like the tatsoi has NOT frozen solid (never seen it that way), but that doesn't seem logical.

I'm in the process of building a manure hot box for starting brassicas, etc, for planting out in March. I wonder if I'm being too cautious with tomatoes?

Thanks -Allan




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